Rina Lazo

Rina Lazo Wasem (October 23, 1923 – November 1, 2019) was a Guatemalan-Mexican painter. She began her career in mural painting with Diego Rivera as his assistant. She worked with him from 1947 until his death in 1957 on projects both in Mexico and Guatemala. Thereafter, she remained an active painter, better known for her mural works than canvases, although the latter have been exhibited in Mexico and other countries. This has made her one of Guatemala's best-known artists. She was a member of the Mexican muralism movement and criticized modern artists as too commercial and not committed to social causes. She believed muralism would revive in Mexico because of its historical value.

Life

Rina Lazo was born on October 23, 1923, in Guatemala City to Arturo Lazo and Melanea Wasern. She attended primary through high school at the Colegio Alemán. She spent her childhood in Cobán, where she had contact with local Mayan peoples, which would later have an impact on her art.

Lazo began her art studies at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in Guatemala City in the early 1940s. (Today this school is called Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas "Rafael Rodríguez Padilla".) There she worked as an assistant to Julio Urruela painting murals at Guatemala's National Palace. At the school, she studied with Carlos Orozco Romero, Jesús Guerrero Galván, Alfredo Zalce, Federico Cantú and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano but quickly became a favorite student of Diego Rivera, who she called her best teacher.

Lazo married Mexican artist Arturo Garcia Bustos in 1949. Their home was said to be a residence of La Malinche, and was later a monastery, prison, and hospital. In 2006, after living there for more than forty years, they opened part of the ground floor to house the Galería de la Casa Colorada. This gallery is run by their daughter, Rina García Lazo who is an architect. Lazo said that the house and the surrounding neighborhood inspired both of them for its history and the legends associated with it. These projects included murals done at the Cáracamo del Río Lerma in Chapultepec titled El agua, origen de la vida sobre la tierra (1951), the natural stone mural at the Olympic Stadium at Ciudad Universitaria (1952), two at the Hospital La Raza, El pueblo en demanda de salud and Historia de la medicine en México (1953), and one in Guatemala, La gloriosa victoria (1954) at the Palacio Nacional de Cultura. The last one depicts the coup which ousted Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, in which blame is cast on the United States. Lazo herself appears in this mural as a young guerilla fighter in a bright red blouse. In 1995, she created another mural for the Museo de Antropologia called Venerable abuelo maiz.

Lazo's works on canvas are less known but her first prize-winning piece is titled Por los caminos de la libertad (1944). She had a number of homages in places such as the Museo Mural Diego Rivera. The Mexican embassy in Guatemala paid tribute to her with an exhibition of panels of her work depicting the murals of Bonampak at the Centro Cultural Luis Cardoza y Aragón in 2010. She and her husband were invited to the United States to recount their time with Rivera in 2011.

International exposure to her work has made Lazo one of the most well-known Guatemalan artists. She was recognized for both her work with Rivera as well as her own independent projects. She received the Emeretisimum prize from the Faculty of Humanities of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. In 2010 she received a recognition from Romania, Although mural painting does not enjoy the popularity today as it once did, Lazo still felt that Mexican muralism was important and relevant. She pointed out that major protagonists with the movement, such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, still had international name recognition and exhibits of their work.

Personal life Lazo met her future husband, Arturo García Bustos, through her association with Rivera and Kahlo.